6 Best Online Visio Alternatives in 2023

Creately is a great visio alternative that offers powerful diagramming and collaboration features. With Creately, you can easily create professional-looking diagrams and collaborate with others in real-time. Additionally, Creately offers a wide variety of templates and shapes to help you get started quickly.

For people who only need to create a few diagrams occasionally, the free version of Creately is more than enough. You are limited to 60 shapes total, but there are templates you can use. There is also a three-workspace limit on the free edition.

What I Like/Dislike About Creately

Pros:

• Visio alternative that is straightforward and simple to use.
• Creately is easy to use and has a wide variety of templates and shapes available,
• Automatic generation of flow lines to your respective items.
• The search function is helpful in finding the right template or shape quickly,
• The import option allows you to use custom images in your diagrams.
• Saves files in various formats with high quality resolution.

Cons:

• Auto-routing often interferes with other elements in your design.
• Sometimes it's challenging to work in some templates, so you need to start with a new blank.
• Drag and drop objects can sometime react in inaccurate way.
• The UI is not as intuitive as other Visio alternatives.
• Limited color and style options available.

Creately Pricing

• Creately Desktop: $75
• Creately Online Personal: $6.95 per month
• Creately Team 5: $40 per month
• Creately Team 10: $80 per month
• Creately Team 25: $200 per month
• Creately Server: $6.95

Best free open-source Visio alternative

Diagrams.net (formerly diagrams.io) is a free diagramming software that is online and desktop based. It is a great free alternative to Microsoft Visio, and offers many of the same features.

Diagrams.net lets you save diagrams to various cloud-based storage platforms such as OneDrive, Google Drive, and DropBox.

JGraph, the company behind diagrams.net puts emphasis on privacy and security. Their software is open source It's available on GitHub.

What I Like/Dislike About Diagrams.net

Pros:

• It has a large library of object elements which can be used to create flow charts or mock diagrams.
• It provides very good templates for sequence diagrams, architecture drawings, workflow diagrams.
• Easy import of existing Visio templates using 1-Click batch Migration function.

Cons:

• Limited features in free versions of tools
• Page load issues with complex designs
• Font and color challenges in dark mode
• Functionalities are not as robust as Visio
• Cannot import high quality images
• The UI is not as nice as other Visio alternatives listed on this page.

Diagrams.net Pricing

• Free: $0 per month

Miro is a cloud-based design and project management tool that helps users communicate and collaborate effectively. With over 35 million users, it's one of the most popular Visio alternatives on the market.

Miro is a Visio alternative that is great for brainstorming, diagramming, meetings & workshops, scrum events, mapping, and research & design. It has integrations with tools you already use and love, and offers enterprise-grade security. It is loved by teams around the world.

What I Like/Dislike About Miro

Pros:

• Miro offers a wide range of templates to choose from, making it easy for users to get started with their project.
• The boards can be easily shared outside of the organization, which is great for collaborating with other teams or individuals.
• Wireframing and diagramming is effortless and smooth, allowing users to quickly visualize their ideas.
• The Infinity page layout is coordinated and smooth feeling during presentations where all information are in one place.

Cons:

• Difficult to control size of sticky notes and font
• Difficult to edit wireframes and diagrams
• Paid plans are too expensive for a single private user
• Doesn't work great on mobile devices
• Board slows down significantly when trying to add too many elements at once

Cacoo is a cloud-based diagramming tool that enables real-time collaboration for teams of all sizes.

With a user-friendly interface and a library of templates, Cacoo makes it easy to create beautiful visuals.

Additionally, Cacoo offers features such as chat, commenting, and video conferencing to facilitate team communication.

Compared to Visio, Cacoo offers more team collaboration features.

What I Like/Dislike About Cacoo

Pros:

• Easy to use and provides a variety of templates.
• Web-based and can be accessed from any device.
• Fast and stable interface
• Can be used for a variety of purposes
• Collaborative diagram editing is great for remote teams.

Cons:

• The loading time, can be long sometime
• Lack of integration with other software
• Limited number of diagrams available for free
• Not as robust as Visio
• The content cannot be changed or edited without an internet connection.
• Images and symbols must be below a certain size to be uploaded.
• Objects cannot be stored and reused between different designs or sheets.

Cacoo Pricing

• Free: $0
• Plus: $4.95
• Team: $6

SmartDraw is a powerful diagramming software that is both easy to use and provides a wide range of features.

It includes quick-start templates for over 70 different diagram types, and integrates with a variety of tools including Google Workspace™, Microsoft Office®, and Atlassian's Confluence and Jira.

Additionally, SmartDraw can generate diagrams from data, has a sophisticated license administration, and is secure.

SmartDraw is a great Visio alternative because it has many features that Visio lacks. It is SSO enabled, and also offers document retention and sophisticated collaboration features.

What I Like/Dislike About SmartDraw

Pros:

• SmartDraw is extremely easy to use compared to other software, such as Visio.
• Library of available templates is impressive
• Compatible with Microsoft Azure and CAD
• Templates are readily available and easy to use.
• The support for the software is responsive and fast.
• It is user-friendly and fairly intuitive.
• The floor plan tool is easy to use and helpful for space planning.

Cons:

• The software can be overwhelming at first
• There are too many options which can slow down the system
• Requires online connection to run and save diagrams
• It can be challenging to remove licensed users in bulk.
• The shapes available in the shape library are outdated.

SmartDraw Pricing

• Single-User: $9.95 per month
• Multiple-Users (for 5+ users): $5.95 per month